50k with Dean Karnazes (center)
According to Kristen: “A marathon just wasn’t enough of a challenge for Brett, so he decided to run farther”.
Bravado aside, that really wasn’t the case. I’m not even a “good” marathoner yet, and still need some serious work to get anywhere near my 3:30 goal. Heck, I still haven’t broken 4:00 yet. This was going to be the year that I went under 3:59:59 and erased the mistake of a 11-minute average for the final 3 miles of OBX to finish at 4:05… but something much cooler came along.
When I realized Karno was coming to town, I knew I had to seize this opportunity to run with him. When Dean was doing his “50 in 50″, I hadn’t gotten into marathons yet and missed that opportunity… I wasn’t going to let this chance pass.
PF Chang’s Rock ‘N Roll Marathon is a huge event; with the full and half marathons combined (not to mention the 150 ultra runners) ’10 was the largest running event in the USA.
This year, my goal was to break 4:00 and sneak up on 3:40 or so. I felt pretty confident & strong overall even though I hadn’t run much since Ironman AZ 6 weeks earlier. I’d done a handful of tempo runs from 6-12 miles and a knocked out 20 two weeks before race day. I can’t say I trained hard, but I figured my full-body workout routine would make up for the “rest” I’d given my legs after IMAZ.
I drove down to the start with my buddy Brian Cook who was shooting to break 3:30 and possibly go as low as a BQ 3:15:59. Parking was pretty easy to come by; the 50k started an hour before the marathon. Aside from Brian’s Honda showing “0″ miles to go before empty and being stopped by an officer for going the wrong way on a one-way street (it was closed, and we were going 5 mph) it was non-eventful. Free, easy parking is a bonus but the real win is the line of port-o-johns with no line right at the edge of our parking lot. The 50k runners had a VIP area pre-start, but I hung out with Brian and ate/drank and got ready. He accompanied me over to the start and we got a chance to meet Dean and get an autograph. He’s in phenomenal shape and is shorter than I expected. I’ve read a couple things that were a little critical of him (Born To Run and a few articles online) and I will tell you that he’s a pleasant, nice guy. Pre-start and during the first 4.8 mile loops he was chatty and friendly with those around him. He was there to have fun and be social, and he succeeded. I walked away with a positive attitude towards him, ’nuffsaid.
The aforementioned 4.8 miles was a series of 5 loops from the start and out about 3/4 miles. Yes, it was boring – but I had fun chatting with a guy “Dave” from Ontario. He came all the way down for a warm winter marathon and was a perfect pacesetter for the “ultra” part of the day.
After about 40 minutes of running, the ultra runners had about 20 minutes to kill before the 26.2 start. We had a little VIP warming tent with space heaters, mylar blankets and Cytomax. The one thing that kinda sucked was that the port-o-johns were 100′ away and all too visible to the half-marathoners that were starting one block South of us. The line for the 3 bathrooms was 50-deep and 6-wide; there was no way I’d make it through the line before the marathon start. The half-marathoners weren’t in a rush – their event didn’t start for over an hour.
One thing that seemed like it would be pretty cool about running the ultra was the Corral #1 start – it’s almost like an All Access VIP pass that allowed us to cut to the very front of the line and mingle with the elite runners. Unfortunately, it also meant that the first mile was going to be “run like hell or get run over by thousands of faster runners”. My buddy Brian was literally dead-center of the first row so he was easy to find – but I knew that I could only hang with him for a few hundred yards or the next 40k or so would be pretty ugly. I made it about 50 feet from the start and was reading the back of his shirt “Keep Me on Pace to Boston”. He literally took off like a shot and made the turn North onto 7th and that was the last I saw of him.*
While I may have survived the initial onslaught of runners, I had to deal with about 2 HOURS of runners passing me – that really irked me. It wasn’t that I cared about being passed (I’ve gotten over that) it was the feeling that I was in everyone else’s way or somewhere I didn’t belong. I kept reminding myself that I had already logged about 5 more miles than any of these fresh legs bounding past me, but the truth was I just never felt comfortable. Most races it takes me 3-4 miles to get in a groove, this time it wasn’t until mile 30.5 that I felt “good”.
I’ve run the PF Chang’s Rock ‘N Roll Marathon 3 times and trained on the course a handful of times; I know the parts that I hate all too well. Mile 15 through the park is where the pain starts and the rest of the race is usually just “embracing the suck”. I was actually pretty pleased that with the extra 4.8 miles I was hitting this area at about 20 and didn’t feel as bad as I had last year. Of course it didn’t hurt that I was going so slow – I still hadn’t found anything that even resembled my normal pace. Speaking of slow, I had a basic goal of keeping my 50k time under 5:05 which was my Ironman AZ run split.
At about mile marker 21, I saw the 4:00 pace group rumble past and started reevaluating my goal. I attempted to latch onto the 4:10 group… then the 4:15 group and finally the 4:20 before I realized that I just didn’t have anything in the tank. My hips were on fire and my legs were getting heavier each step I took. I finally convinced myself that running for 5 minutes and walking for 1 would be the best way to tackle the last few miles. While I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of a 4:30+ marathon, I didn’t finish in pain, and I was really looking forward to placing my commemorative 50k medal around my neck… and got a note and an apology instead.
I found out earlier in the morning that they opened the registration from 50 participants to 150 – and apparently they didn’t get any more medals. The note I was handed said we could expect our medals in the mail in 4-6 weeks. So, after all that effort I walked away empty-handed and pretty disappointed. Even the slowest race is made a little brighter by a medal and a “congratulations”… a red slip of paper and an apology clearly didn’t have the same morale-lifting effect.
*Brian ended up shattering his initial goal of 3:30, but missed his BQ by a little bit. He went out a little too fast and at one point was 10-15 minutes ahead of his projected finish time and it caught up with him in the late miles.